Well someone hadda say it and it might as well be me. I like the concept. A lot.<br><br>As an art director, I see serious merit in this thing. It's like having my Wacom tablet with me wherever I go (and my desktop) but without the wires. That's a very cool thought and it's the first really useful laptop I can imagine for someone like me.<br><br>Not being a touch-typist, and having resigned myself to hunting and pecking, I really could care less if it didn't have a keyboard. But it does. So I can hunt and peck til the chickens come home to roost.<br><br>And I could care less if the implementation of the handwriting recognition software is less than perfect, because I can read my scrawl even if the software can't.<br><br>What it can do is let me scamp concepts straight into the machine and save them and let me flick through them and delete them and convert them and even email and print them. That is bloody marvelous. I'll never have a Sharpie Ultra-Fine dry up on me ever again, I can work anyplace and present anyplace, and when I get the time I can play games or surf the 'net.<br><br>The handwriting recognition thing is a bonus if they ever get it to work.<br><br>All I can say is get the price down $500 and slap an Apple logo on it and I'm there.<br><br>

As I said earlier I like the concept a lot too, but people turned me down saying it's a useless concept and that I'm such a niche market that I don't even count. People were used to say the same about cars, ball point pens, mobiles, microcomputers and windows os.<br><br>I can imagine the new age graphic artist as a modern day Michelangelo (as you probably know he never left his place without a sketchbook) with a digicam, a bluetooth mobile and a tablet wondering in the urban nature.<br><br>Too bad for people with challenged imagination and ability to adopt to cool new technology.<br><br>http://www.macminute.com/cgi-bin/wwwthre...p;o=0&part=<br><br>http://raszl.net

If I was you I would wait until rev 2 comes out.<br>PC Tablet review Seems to have to many short comings.<br><br>But like with any new technology, there are many shortcomings. <br><br>Sending copies of your handwritten notes to your colleagues could be frustrating because right now, you can only do so by exporting them as Web pages or TIFF graphics files. Microsoft needs to work on this so that it's easy to transcribe written notes to text then copy and paste into any application including Word, Outlook or PowerPoint. The company says it's working on a free Journal viewer download that will allow colleagues without tablets to view your notes, but that's still not enough. <br><br>Right now, you can add handwritten notes to Office documents on the tablet by downloading the "Office Pack" from Microsoft. But that's limited too. Within word documents, you can only add handwritten notes in square boxed in the margins. No circling words or marking things in red or crossing out entire sentences. <br><br>Writing on the screen also takes some getting used to because plastic does not have the same traction as paper. Trying to call up and highlight the right program in your task bar can test your patience. <br><br>And you better hold on to the special magnetic-tipped stylus that comes along with your computer. Without it, the computer won't work. You can't use your fingers or a pen like you can with Palm.<br><br>

Well Carp, if I was intending to send someone else a message then I would do what I'm doing now. Use the keyboard. Just because the beastie has an active tablet/screen doesn't make the keyboard unusable.<br><br>And I already covered the handwriting recognition thing above.<br><br>The criticism of the 'writing on plastic rather than paper' applies just as easily to my Wacom Intuos...and people new to that find navigation difficult for the first few days but after that it's second nature; remember how it was when you first started using a mouse?<br><br>I have no doubt that this version 1 of the tablet device (why must they call it a tablet PC...sheesh) will be flawed. Very few first iterations of anything are totally right. So, I won't be rushing out to slap down two and a half big-ones on one so that I'll be the first on my block to own the thing. So your warning is heeded.<br><br>I think a lot of Mac folk pooh-pooh it simply because it's not Apple who have launched it. I imagine there will be a lot of tune changing when the Mac version is out there though.<br><br>And hey, it's not an innovation per se...various products have attempted this in the past. This is the first time that so many big manufacturers have 'seen the light' and have decided its time has come.<br><br>I believe there is a genuine market for this concept. It excites me and I hope Apple get their stuff together and launch their own tablet device. I'm ready.<br><br>

I'm sure you're right. Then again, my Wacom's stylus isn't cheap either. But at the end of the day, it's relative. And I can see a good reason for flagging the bulky tower workstation away and replacing it with one (or more) of these things.<br><br>Exciting times.<br><br>

Actually, they are fairly cheap to replace, plus, you can use the eraser side of a pencil in the event you lose it and need to use the tablet.<br><br>[color:red] Kiss My Banana!</font color=red><br>Visit me here!

<blockquote><font size=1>In reply to:</font><hr><p>I think a lot of Mac folk pooh-pooh it simply because it's not Apple who have launched it. I imagine there will be a lot of tune changing when the Mac version is out there though.<p><hr></blockquote><p>Yes, but Apple would probably make the thing enticing by having features that the PC version doesn't offer. Furthermore... The thing would just look so much cooler... especially with the OSX Dock waving around at the bottom of the screen! <br><br>[color:red] Kiss My Banana!</font color=red><br>Visit me here!

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